


(you wouldn't like me) if you met me

by jasondont (minigami)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Let them say fuck, M/M, Pre-Slash, Some Plot, moon's haunted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22863415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont
Summary: Tristan accompanies Rex and Ezra to an old clone base to pick up some supplies. It goes as expected.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Tristan Wren, Ezra Bridger/Tristan Wren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59





	(you wouldn't like me) if you met me

**Author's Note:**

> first fic for this fandom. maybe last. english isn't my first language and i'm a bit out of practice AND this isn't beta'd, so if i've missed something please PLEASE be kind. also i made up some stuff (a moon, their ages, etc), and while i've tried to keep it as canon-like as possible, i may have failed.
> 
> i'm not super happy with this but oh well. it was fun!

i.

It’s snowing again. If Tristan closes his eyes, he thinks he can hear the ice settling out in the lake, and the pines groaning under the weight of the snow. It's all an illusion, of course. The walls of House Wren are thick, strong, and the air inside is still, always silent, almost stifling. When he was younger, it felt safe, like a cocoon, like his mother’s womb. It doesn’t anymore. Tristan knows better.  
The lower levels are very dark and very cold. They reach deep into the earth. The deepest corridors are hundreds of years old, built during one of the many wars his family and his people have fought. The walls are bare, black rock that doesn’t reflect light, and when he reaches with freezing fingers, they are wet, so cold they hurt. He is shivering and his eyes blink, blind in the profound darkness, but he doesn’t really need them to see where he is going. He’s spent many months far from home, but he thinks he couldn’t forget its corridors and hidden rooms even if he tried.

He finds Sabine where he thought she would be when he couldn’t find her in the room where she's staying: she is in one of the old storage rooms. She’s wearing one of his old sweaters, too big for her thin frame, and her bare feet shine almost blue in the cold light of her lantern. She’s surrounded by open boxes, the durasteel dirty with dust and rust. There aren’t many, and they are not very big. Ursa threw away most of Sabine’s things when she left—and what she didn’t get rid of, she hid in the entrails of the house.  
It is very like Sabine to go looking for things that should remain buried.  
Then again, it is maybe very like Tristan as well. After all, he is also there.

She must have heard him in the corridor, because she looks over her shoulder and smiles, a bit crooked and very tired. In the blue brightness of her lantern, she looks washed out. The brown of her skin grey, her hair the color of the snow outside.

“Hey,” she says. For a few seconds, none of them move. Tristan opens his mouth, wanting to apologize, to make his excuses and leave, to go back to his cold room and his colder bed—but then she points with her chin to the floor beside her. He closes his mouth and obeys.

They sit down, together and in silence for a while. Tristan tries not to look at her directly, but it’s hard. She is both bigger than life and smaller than he remembers. And Tristan knows that’s because it’s been five years: she left when she was fourteen. He was twelve, just a little kid, smitten with his cool, clever big sister, the pride of Clan Wren. But it still shocks him, the thousand differences that he finds between the Sabine in his head and the one who sits by his side.  
“That’s my sweater,” he finally says. Sabine snorts.  
“And the trousers are Mother’s,” she answers. “I’d offer to give it back, but it’s not like I have anything else to wear around here. Just my armor.”  
Her old clothes would very probably still have fit her, but they threw those away as well.  
“I don’t think it fits _me_ anymore,” Tristan says. This time, Sabine laughs out loud. The noise fills the small room, and Tristan twists his head to hide the tiny smile that appears on his face, the gesture instinct or reflex or memory.  
“You can say that again,” snorts Sabine. She turns to look at him, her smile sadder. “You’ve grown, little brother.”  
“Well, you haven’t,” answers Tristan. Sabine pushes him, her hand small and hard, and he bends, lets himself be pushed. “And, well. It’s been five years. It had to happen sometime.”

The silence that follows threatens to destroy the weak sense of familiarity that their awkward banter has managed to build. It’s full of true, ugly and uncomfortable things, and Tristan does not want to talk about _any of them_. He is smart enough to realise that they probably should, sooner rather than later, but he’d rather not do it, ever, if he can avoid it.  
Sabine, however, plows right ahead.

“I am not going to apologize for leaving,” says Sabine, her voice low and rough. She's no longer looking at him, but at the thing she holds in her lap. “I did what I thought I was right.”  
“And you still think you were right.”  
“Yes.”  
A beat, and then:  
“I am not going to apologize, either,” says Tristan.  
“Tristan, you joined-,” begins Sabine, incredulous.  
“It was the best of two very bad choices, Sabine. And I was fifteen.”  
Sabine sighs. Angry and uncomfortable, Tristan keeps silent and looks around the room, to its low ceiling and the spare collection of objects that fill the shelves on the walls. His family is old but travels light.

Finally, he sees what she holds in her hands. At first he doesn’t know what they are, but then he recognises them: a pair of baby shoes, white and fuzzy and soft looking. They remind him of the snow outside.  
“Whose are those?” he asks, fascinated. When he lifts one of the shoes, it’s so light it’s almost as if he were holding nothing. It is warm from his sister’s palms.  
“Ours, probably. And also Mother’s, and her siblings’, and so on and so forth,” says Sabine. She takes the shoe back. “That’s how things are around here.”  
“What were you looking for?” asks Tristan. Sabine shrugs her shoulders, and puts the shoes back in the box.  
“Nothing. I… couldn’t sleep. It’s been too long since the last time I slept in, like, an actual house, I guess,” laughs Sabine, uncomfortable. It’s not the whole truth, but Tristan is tired. He lets it pass.  
“Do you miss it?”  
“What? The _Ghost_?”  
Tristan nods. The _Ghost_ , and her other family. Sabine shrugs.  
“I guess. I haven’t been away from them or the ship for years. It’s… weird. I keep reaching for them, for Ezra and Hera and the rest, and… they are not there.”  
Tristan breathes, in and out. He knows his anger is unfair and undeserved. He buries it.  
“You’ll see Ezra tomorrow. Before we leave.”  
A beat, and then: “If you miss him, maybe you should be the one to go with him.”  
He doesn’t think he sounds as defensive as he feels, but he may be wrong. Sabine turns towards him, a brow arched.  
“You know Mother wants you to go with him and Rex. And you know why.”  
And when Ursa Wren wants something, it happens. Tristan gives in to the temptation, and rolls his eyes. Sabine snorts.  
“That’s just her being… well. I don’t want to say paranoid,” says Tritan. “And you know it.”  
“Yes, well. It’s not like I disagree with you,” answers Sabine. “But in my old age-”  
Tristan snorts. Sabine elbows him, hard and pointy, and goes on. “In my old age I’ve learned to choose my battles.”  
“And you’d rather fight the Empire than Mother.”  
“Yes. Well, at least in this specific situation.”

A beat of silence. It is so very cold, and so very quiet. Tristan doesn’t feel his toes anymore, and he can feel Sabine shivering beside him. When she sighs, he feels that as well.  
“Shouldn’t you be in bed, anyway?” says Sabine. “The mission is pretty much a milk run, but knowing Ezra it’ll probably get interesting.”  
He couldn’t sleep. It’s been so long since he had a full night’s sleep that Tristan can’t remember the last time he wasn’t tired, so he just shrugs.  
“What do you mean?”  
Sabine sighs. “It’s like he has this… supernatural ability to attract trouble. And if there’s none, you can be damn sure he’ll go looking for it.”  
She sounds both exasperated and extremely fond. Tristan clenches his jaw, and then forces himself to relax.  
“He doesn’t look like much,” he says. “He’s so… “  
Sabine laughs. “Oh, I know what you mean. But I trust him. And you should, too. Just… keep an open mind. It might get... weird.”  
Tristan lifts his brows. “‘Weird’? What do you mean?”  
“Oh, you’ll see.”

ii.

The ship arrives early in the morning. It’s an old freighter, mid-size, the color of the frozen lake that lies beyond the stronghold. It approaches from the South: thick, black clouds crouch to the North. When Bridger and the clone step out of the ship, the Jedi looks back and whistles, then turns to the old man, who says something that makes him laugh. The bright orange of his spacesuit looks like a blister on the snow.  
Tristan feels himself scowl, and at his right, Sabine hums, the sound distorted by her helmet. Ursa is silent, and Tristan can feel her disapproval at his back like radiation. She reluctantly respects Kanan Jarrus, and she likes Hera Syndulla, but Tristan knows that when she looks at Ezra Bridger she sees only a child.

The newcomers start approaching the house, and with a final grunt, Ursa goes back inside. She doesn’t say anything, and Tristan doesn’t look back to watch her leave. Sabine sighs, exasperated, and then she takes off her helmet and drops from the gallery to the snow. It’s deeper than it looks, and when she sinks to mid thigh, it’s Bridger the one who runs to her, laughing, and helps her out.  
Tristan takes his helmet off as well and then takes the stairs, his armoured boots clanking on the metal and his breath floating like so many clouds in front of his bare face.

The first thing Bridger says when he sees him is, “I see you changed your armor.” Immediately, Sabine punches him in the arm.  
“What?” he yelps.  
She gets in his face, index finger raised. “ _Behave_.”  
Bridger scowls, and opens his mouth, and Tristan decides to interrupt before either he or Sabine lose patience. He turns to the clone, makes himself smile, and extends a hand.  
“Hello. I am Tristan Wren,” he says. The clone looks him up and down, and Tristan sees how he notices the fresh paint, and his clenched jaw, and his youth, and a thousand other things Tristan himself is probably unaware of; for a second, he thinks the man is going to ignore his raised hand. But then he smiles, and raises his own, grabs his forearm. He looks much older than Tristan knows he really is, but his grip is strong.  
“I’m Rex,” he says. And then he drops his hand, and turns to Ezra, who is arguing with Sabine in a tone that tries to be low and discreet and fails. If Tristan hadn’t seen him repel actual blaster shots with it, he’d think the lightsaber at his hip is a fake.  
“Come on, kid,” the clone tells Ezra. “That storm looks like trouble.”  
“Yeah, you’re right,” he answers, with a glance to the far-off clouds. He turns back to Sabine. “You sure you can’t come with us? We’ll be back for dinner, I promise.”  
Sabine rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “You know you just jinxed yourself, right?”  
“Oh, come on, don’t be like that. This is just a milk run,” answers Bridger. He opens wide his blue eyes, all faux innocence. It’s charming, and he obviously knows it, which makes it annoying. “What could go wrong?”  
“With you guys? Probably everything.”

*

The freighter is an old Corellian model that won’t stop rattling, refitted and modified to the point that its original design is almost impossible to guess at: it has no name, and it’s older than the three of them combined. The clone explains how and where they found it, and by the end of the short anecdote Tristan has decided that he likes the man. He exudes an air of quiet competence that, compared to Bridger’s sullen energy, is like a balm.  
“Let me pilot,” says the Jedi once they close the doors, the storm almost over their heads.  
“No. Sit down,” is Rex’s answer. Bridger ignores him, and approaches the pilot’s chair. Tristan sits down in one of the passenger seats in the cabin, his helmet an awkward but comfortin weight on his lap, and looks over their shoulders to the mountains of his home as they shrink.  
“Where are we going, anyways?”  
“You don’t know where we are going and you want to fly us there?” says Tristan, incredulous. Rex hums..  
“Do you?” he asks Tristan.  
“Yes. An old clone base. From the war.”  
“But it was never used, right?” says Bridger. He’s still leaning on Rex’s seat, all lanky grace. “There’s not much information, though. All I could find in the holonet or the archives was something about the atmosphere being toxic or something like that. But, like, shouldn’t they have known about it before building the base?”  
“So you know where we’re going,” says Tristan. Bridger rolls his eyes.  
“Of course I know where we are going. I’m a professional,” he says. Rex snorts, but Bridger ignores him. He points at Tristan. “I’ve been doing this for years. Far longer than you.”  
“You know, you make me wish I had let Saxon kill you.”  
“Oh, believe me, you’re not the only one,” says Rex. Bridger splutters, offended. The clone ignores him. “The base where we’re going already had a reputation back then. I don’t know much more than you about the reasons why, Ezra, but a lot of men died before the Republic decided to leave the moon altogether.”

They are hitting the upper atmosphere. The storm writhes beneath the hull of the freighter, a mass of black and grey and purple. The walls of the ship mutter and tremble, but the rickety vessel keeps on.  
“Was it the Separatists?” asks Bridger. He sounds fascinated. Tristan tries not to show it, but he is as well. He shouldn’t: he’s heard so much about the war, and about his family’s role in it, that one would think he’s had enough for a thousand lives. But hearing Rex talk about is different: he makes it sound real and awful and, at the same time, absolutely routine.  
“I don’t think it was them, no,” says Rex. “We’re hitting hyperspace in a couple of minutes. Ezra, sit down”  
For once, he obeys, and takes the seat next to Tristan’s. The space between the seats is tight, and their knees knock into each other’s. Bridger looks down and scowls, but doesn’t complain. He waits until after they enter hyperspace to keep asking questions.  
“Why do you think that?”  
Rex shrugs, but he doesn’t turn back to look at them. “I don’t know. Call it a hunch.”  
“Something tells me you are not telling us everything you know,” says Tristan.  
Rex sighs, and finally turns in his seat. “I only have hearsay and gossip, and that’s not useful. And anyway,” he says, “it’s not as if we were going to stay there for longer than half an hour, tops.”  
A beat of silence, and then Bridger speaks. “Well, now I have a bad feeling about it. So thank you for that.”  
Tristan rolls his eyes and leans back in his seat. “It’ll probably be fine. That place’s been abandoned for what? Twenty years? It’ll be a fast job. A milk run, like Sabine said.”

A short silence settles over the ship. Finally, Rex sighs. “It’ll be two, three hours until we get there. You should settle down, try to rest,” he says.  
“And you?” asks Tristan.  
Rex is already reclining his seat. “I’m going to take a nap. If there’s trouble, it’ll find me well rested.”

*

Bridger sleeps like a child, open-mouthed and sprawled on his seat. Tristan, who didn’t manage to get more than four hours of sleep the previous night, and whose hyperspace nap has been short and not very deep, can’t stop looking at him. He envies him with a virulence that surprises him.  
Rex is also awake and alert. When he sees Tristan looking at the Jedi, he snorts.  
“I’ve no idea how he does that,” he says.  
“What? Sleep?”  
“He’ll fall asleep wherever and whenever,” answers the clone. “Like it’s nothing.”  
Both of them look at Bridger for a few seconds in a silence that’s only broken by the hum of the engines.  
“Might be a Jedi thing?” says Rex. Tristan hums noncommittally. _Must be nice,_ he thinks, _to have nothing to worry about._

As if sensing his disapproval, Bridger chooses that exact moment to wake up with a shout. Tristan jumps in his seat, and manages to dodge the kick the Jedi throws in his direction. His hand goes, on instinct, to one of the guns in his belt. Rex just scowls and turns in his seat, a worried glint in his eyes, and looks down to Bridger, who has his head in his hands, his back hunched.  
“Everything alright, kid?” he asks. Bridger looks up. For the first time since they’ve mounted the shuttle, there’s no trace of humor in his face. Tristan looks at them, nonplussed.  
“Yeah, I…” Bridger stops himself, and then tilts his head, as if listening to some distant voice. “Actually, I’m not sure. Where are we?”  
Tristan forces himself to let go of his blaster. Bridger looks at him, at his hand, and lifts a brow before turning to Rex. Tristan ignores the Jedi. “We must be close by. Captain?”  
“T minus five.”  
Bridger hums to himself, still scowling. He leaves his seat and goes to stand next to Rex. The old man tilts his head in the Jedi’s direction, his eyes still on the light blue of hyperspace.  
“Anything you want to tell me before we arrive?” he asks. Tristan looks at their backs, uncomprehending, and keeps silent.  
“I have a very, very bad feeling about this,” says Ezra, his voice falsely solemn. “So no, not really. Just business as usual.”  
Rex snorts, and then the freighter drops from hyperspace with a groan.

iii.

There’s something oppressive about Aumer. Here and there Tristan can see the remains of what once must have been a green, furiously alive world: the spindly skeletons of Aumer’s trees reach for the sky with dead, blackened branches, its trunks like the pillars of a home long gone. A mountain range looms to the North, its peaks blue and craggy. Whatever happened twenty years ago deprived this moon’s atmosphere of any semblance of oxygen; with it went first the lives of the clones barracked there and its native fauna, and then everything else. The wind whistles between them, against the durasteel and transparisteel of the abandoned Republic base, against the hull of the freighter. Its icy fingers search for the minute crevices in Tristan’s armor, making him glad he’s wearing almost twenty kilograms of beskar. Bridger is not so lucky, but Tristan hasn’t heard him complain once since they’ve exited the ship, even if he can see the Jedi shiver from where he is, his back bowed against the wind.  
To be fair, it’s only been five minutes.

“The cargo is inside the base.” Rex’s voice sounds tinny inside Tristan’s helmet. The man will remain inside the freighter, just in case they need to leave in a hurry. The Mandalorian grabs the handle of the hovercart and starts pushing.  
“Of course it is,” grumbles Bridger, walking behind him. He’s wearing a scout trooper helmet painted a bright, hideous green. Tristan recognises his sister’s handiwork in the choice of color. He isn’t happy either about having to haul who knows how many crates to the freighter, but he keeps silent. There‘s something about the quiet of the moon that makes him anxious. He feels as if under the watchful gaze of an enormous predator that’s only waiting for the best moment to attack.  
“There is something very wrong about this place,” says Bridger while they walk towards the doors of the old hangar, as if he just read his mind.  
“I know what you mean,” answers Tristan. He doesn’t look at the Jedi, his gaze focused on the old base. It’s built on and in a huge, black hill, its design both clumsy and impersonal. The hangar where the cargo they’re supposed to pick up is supposed to be hidden is closed, its doors a tall, grey wall of scratched durasteel. The Republic crest is still visible, black on grey.  
“You do?” Bridger sounds slightly incredulous. Tristan inhales, and suppresses his impatience.  
“I might not be a… Jedi, or whatever,” he says. “But this place, it feels… It feels watchful. And not in a good way.”  
“Yeah,” agrees Bridger. He sounds distracted, and keeps looking towards the hill beyond the hangar, his head tilted. His right hand hovers over his lightsaber. “There’s something on this moon, and I don’t think it wants us here.”

They’ve finally arrived before the hangar’s doors. Tristan turns to look at Bridger, and says: “Well, isn’t that ominous and at all useful.”  
“I know. Sorry,” Bridger says.  
He doesn’t sound sorry. Tristan sighs, and lets go of the hovercart. “Well, the faster we take care of this, the sooner we can get the hell out of here. Can you see the… ?”  
Tristan looks up, searching for the override panel that opens the doors. He finds it at the same time as Bridger: a small flap under an overhang, more than four meters high.  
“I’ll take care of this,” says Bridger. He closes his eyes, and raises his right hand. A few seconds later, the hangar door starts rising with a low hum.  
Tristan is impressed despite himself. He keeps silent, and pushes the hovercart until it’s inside the darkened and dusty hangar. It’s mostly empty, and he quickly finds the crates they’ve been sent to pick up.

“I expected something else,” says Bridger, looking around the room.  
“Like what? Some corpses? A giant monster?” Tristan doesn’t wait for an answer. He lets go of the cart and turns on his commlink. “Hey, Captain. The cargo is where we were told it would be.”  
“Understood. Hurry up and take it back to the ship. The sooner we leave this place the happier I'll be.”  
“Copy.”  
Bridger keeps on talking, as if the interruption hadn’t happened. “Well, yes. Didn’t you?”  
Tristan shrugs noncommittally. He nears one of the crates, and waits impatiently while Bridger does the same. Between the two of them they carry it to the hovercart.

They work in silence for a while. When all the crates are on the cart, Tristan starts pushing it back to the freighter. Bridger, however, doesn’t follow him. He stands, petrified in the middle of the old airfield, his face invisible under his helmet but tilted towards the blue, blue sky.  
“Bridger?” the Jedi doesn’t answer. “Bridger!”  
Bridger turns to look at him. Tristan hears something; a hum. An engine, and then: the howling of a TIE fighter. Of more than one.  
Something buzzes to Tristan’s left. When he turns his head, he sees Bridger, lightsaber on his hand. “Northwest,” he says. He’s already talking to Rex, no trace of humor left in his voice. “Rex, we’ve got company, we need to leave.”  
Tristan is looking towards the sky through his scope. He can see two troop transports and a whole squadron of fighters. He slaps Bridger in the arm and points. The Jedi mutters a curse.

The TIEs are on them in half a second. Tristan rolls, hides behind the hovercart, and Bridger stands his ground, bright green saber in front of him. Faster than the Mandalorian can see, he swings his blade, a blur of light that somehow returns their shots to the fighters.  
Rex isn’t so lucky. While Tristan looks from behind the crates, one, two shots hit the old freighter.  
“Shit,” he mutters. To his commlink, “Rex! Get out of here! We’ll manage!”  
“What? No!”  
“The ship is too old! It won’t hold and you know it.”  
While Tristan looks, an Imperial shuttle lands next to the Rebel ship. Bridger curses.  
“Rex! Go!” he says. He doesn’t even sound out of breath, “we’ll be fine. We’ll use the base and take care of the troopers and you can come back later.”  
A beat of silence, and then “Fine! You better be alive when I come back, or Kanan’ll skin me, kid.”

Apparently nobody’ll skin him if _Tristan_ dies. He sighs, and starts shooting at the troopers that are exiting the transport.

Rex’s freighter takes off and leaves, weaving between the TIEs and returning fire; soon, he’s just a speck in Aumer’s unnaturally blue sky.  
Tristan looks to Bridger, still shooting. He starts to tell him that they should get inside the old clone base, use the hangar as a bottleneck, but Bridger plows on ahead, his lightsaber a blur, and throws himself into the middle of the group of troopers. Tristan mutters a curse. He keeps his position and tries to give him cover.

He doesn’t make it easy. Bridger won’t stop moving: he jumps from one stormtrooper to another, weaves between them, uses them as shields against their own blaster bolts.  
He’s very fast, and very good, but there are way too many. And then the second shuttle lands, and Tristan sees the telltale black of Purge trooper armor, and he realises they’re in trouble.  
“Bridger! We should- fuck,” Tristan ducks, shoots back, keeps talking, “we should take refuge inside the base!”  
Bridger turns his back to the troopers. “What? No! I’m fine!”  
“Are you fucking kidding me? There are too many! We’ll be overrun in seconds! And you’re too far away, this isn’t how it-”

Tristan doesn’t _usually_ hate being right, but this is one of those times. It happens as if in slow motion: Bridger still has his back turned towards the shuttle, and he doesn’t see how one of the Purge troopers lifts their rifle. Tristan shouts, shoots his own gun, but it’s both too late and not fast enough. At the last moment Bridger dodges, and the blaster bolt doesn’t hit its mark; not completely. It grazes his helmet, and throws him to the ground.  
From his position, next to the hangar with his back to the open maw that’s its door, Tristan can see the black crack that marrs Sabine’s bright colors, smell the burnt plastisteel.

The rest of the troop advances. Bridger, a hand on his broken helmet, stands up, begins to move back to the base, his saber held high, still repelling blaster bolts. With a last curse, Tristan runs towards him.  
He’s no Jedi, but he manages. He downs two approaching stormtroopers two well-placed shots, and then shoulder checks another one out of the way, trusting the beskar in his armor to take care of any stray shots. He turns to Bridger.  
“You okay?”  
The Jedi nods. The crack has almost broken the helmet in two, and he holds his left hand to the hole, as if trying to keep his precious oxygen from escaping. Tristan chews his lip, and hopes against hope that they’ve gotten lucky and the base’s life support systems still work. Both of them start running back to the hangar, the troopers on their heels.  
Once they’re back inside, Bridger stops. Tristan begins to look for a panel, a switch, something to lower the doors, but the Jedi grabs his arm.  
“Wait,” he says, his voice hoarse. A whistle can be heard from the helmet. He switches off his lightsaber, hooks the weapon to his belt, and raises his newly free hand, his other clenched around Tristan’s bicep.

A beat, a loud clang, and the hangar door rolls down with a thundering noise. A second of pitch black darkness, and then Tristan hears the telltale sound of the generator coming alive, and a dim, grey clarity fills the hangar. Something creaks, and when he looks up, Tristan sees the life support fans begin to move.  
Bridger lets go of his arm and turns to Tristan. He takes off his broken helmet. He’s eyes are bloodshot, and his lips have an unhealthy blue tint.  
“That was,” starts Tristan “very, very dumb.”  
Bridger smiles, sheepish. “Yes, it was. Please don’t tell Sabine,” he says. He then falls down, like a puppet with its strings cut, and hits the dusty floor of the base with a dull thump, his head between his knees and his back bowed.  
Tristan looks down at him and then sighs, “Fuck.”

iv.

They are jamming communications, and everytime Tristan tries to use his commlink the only answer is a crackling growl. Meanwhile, he can hear how the troopers are trying to break into the hangar. The metal doors creak and sway, and sparks fly where they are trying to cut a hole inside. It’s not the worst situation he’s found himself in, but it’s a close second.  
(The worst? The day Sabine came back. Tristan is sure it’s no coincidence that Bridger was present for both messes.)  
At least Bridger is still breathing, and alive, he thinks. Tristan takes off his helmet, pushes a gauntlet through his hair, and tries to decide what he should do. They can’t stay there: he’s surprised they haven’t tried yet to blast the hangar doors open. He looks around. The place is empty save for a pile of empty crates pushed to one of the corners that must have been there since the end of the war. The dust is so thick that when he turns he leaves footprints on the floor. When he finally finds the blast doors that connect the hangar to the rest of the base, he feels something give in inside himself. With a sigh of relief, he puts his helmet back on and gets on his knees.  
“Bridger,” he says. He lowers himself, puts his hand on the Jedi’s shoulder. He shakes him, at first gently, then stronger “we need to move.”

Just when Tristan is starting to feel anxious, Bridger blinks and sits up with a groan. He looks around himself, clearly disoriented, before lifting his eyes. Once he finds Tristan’s faceplate, he scowls, buries his face in his hands.  
Tristan doesn’t take it personally. He has a feeling it’s not him Bridger is angry at. And he’s not very happy with the Jedi at the moment.  
“We need to get inside,” he says again, his voice robotic and distorted. “Can you walk?”  
He stands up, and offers his right hand to Bridger. He sighs, and grasps it. Tristan helps him stand up, and when he wobbles, he holds him up.  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” answers Bridger. He pushes his hand through his close cropped hair, and laughs, slightly bitter. “Am I glad Rex didn’t see that back there.”  
“I wonder why,” says Tristan, sarcasm dripping from his words. “Through here. I saw the doors earlier.”  
Bridger is scowling again, but once he sees them his expression changes.  
“Can you open them?” asks Tristan.  
“Yeah. Yes, I think I can. But I don’t know if I should.”  
Tristan blinks.  
“Excuse me?”  
Bridger shrugs. He tilts his head, his arms crossed. “We don’t know what’s on the other side.”  
“It’s an old clone base. I’m thinking that what’s on the other side is just… you know. The base.”  
“And I have a very bad feeling about this place.”

Tristan suppresses the urge to ask him to elaborate. He sighs, and crosses his own arms.  
“Well, I _feel_ that we either get inside before our friends manage to open the doors,” he says, pointing to his back, “or you’re going to suffocate and die.”  
Bridger scrunches his nose. He does look ill, and it’s not just the lack of oxygen, or the blaster shot he almost took to the face. He is queasy and pale, his dark skin almost grey. There is a red welt in the right side of his jaw, inflamed and angry looking. Tristan wonders if it hurts; Bridger acts as if it isn’t even there.  
“Okay,” he finally says. He closes his eyes and lifts his right hand. Tristan, uncomfortable, reholsters his guns and looks back to the hangar door. He thinks the noise the troopers are making trying to cut into the place’s gotten louder. Something clicks to his left, and he turns back to Bridger.

The blast door gets stuck, so Tristan gets his shoulder in the space between the door itself and the frame and pushes. A cold wind hits his faceplate, and he scowls. It smells… wrong, despite the filters on his helmet. Not bad. But wrong. Damp and dust and durasteel and rust and… something green, spicy, rotting. He shakes his head and moves from the entrance to the base, and Bridger follows him, blade in hand. He looks around himself, suspicious, as if he were waiting for something, anything, to jump them from the dark. The green of his lightsaber shines off the durasteel of the walls, and tints the dust on the floor. The Jedi lifts it over his head, and its light crawls down the corridor, fighting ineffectually against the dark.  
“Can you close them back again?” asks Tristan.  
“The doors?”  
Tristan breathes. “Yes.”  
“ _Should_ I?”  
Tristan just looks at him, speechless. Bridger shrugs, and the Mandalorian knows there and then that he’s been laughed at. “Okay.”

He does something with his free hand, and the doors close with a shudder. They wait in the cold, dark quiet for a few seconds, but they are alone. The echoes of the troopers cutting through the hangar door have disappeared, and the only thing Tristan can hear is the buzzing of Bridger’s lightsaber, the Jedi’s calm breathing, and the thrumming of the ventilation system.  
“We should go to the command center and think of how we’re going to get out of here,” says Bridger.  
“Do you know where it is?” he doesn’t mean to sound so disbelieving, but it comes out that way. When Bridger turns to look at him, Tristan is glad he’s still wearing his helmet.  
“Yes, yes I do. It’s not the first clone base I’ve been to, you know.”  
Tristan chews on his lip. “I’ve never been to a clone base.”  
The few that were built in Mandalore were destroyed during the war; the ones that survived were dismantled, its components reused in other buildings.  
“What, Saxon wasn’t a fan, so you weren’t allowed?” Bridger sounds… tense. Distracted. Tristan clenches his jaw and doesn’t rise to the taunt.  
“No. There are no clone bases left in Mandalore.”  
“And you’ve never been out of your home system?”  
“No. This is my first time.”  
“And what do you think?”  
“It’s fine,” Tristan says. “Not sure about the company, though.”  
Bridger glances at Tristan, almost coy, his brows lifted.  
“Are you talking about me or about the troopers?”  
Tristan smiles, the expression hidden by his helmet. “Guess.”  
Bridger laughs softly, and smiles, rueful. “I may have earned that.”  
"You're very, very annoying."  
"And you have no sense of humor.”  
“Excuse me?”  
“Stop taking yourself so seriously, it makes you very easy to tease.”  
“I do have a sense of humor.”  
“Where? Did you leave it at home? Does your mother keep it for you when you are out?”  
“Yes, in the cellar. There’s a little box with my name on it and everything.”  
Bridger snorts, inelegant and kind of disgusting, and Tristan. Tristan’s face hurts.

*

Bridger manages to turn on one of the old consoles, and while Tristan familiarizes himself with the base plans Bridger uses the base’s array to bypass Imperial jamming and comm Rex. The clone captain is already with the rest of the Ghost crew, and soon the cold and dusty command center is filled with the voices of Syndulla’s team. When Tristan hears his sister’s, he stops for a second, and then keeps trying to learn the place’s plans by memory.  
However, his attention keeps straying to Bridger’s conversation with Sabine, to their easy trust, to the way they talk to each other. He wonders if they are together, decides they must be, and then changes his mind. When Sabine addresses him, he’s so deep in his own thoughts he jumps.  
“So. How is it going with Ezra? Has he messed up yet?” she asks. She sounds as if she’s joking, and she is; she’s also actually worried. Tristan glances at the Jedi: he’s frantically shaking his head, his eyes open wide.  
“Don’t you dare,” he whispers.  
“Well,” starts Tristan. “I wouldn’t say he’s messed up _per se_.”  
Bridger exhales. Tristan smirks.  
“He managed to get shot in the face, however,” he says. And then waits out the chaos, his attention back on the maps.

“You are such an asshole,” Bridger sputters when he finally cuts communication.  
Tristan ignores him. “I’m guessing nobody can come back to pick us up?”  
Bridger sighs, dramatic, and then shakes his head. He’s sitting on the floor, his legs sprawled and his trousers dusty. He touches the welt on his jaw absently while he answers.  
“No, they can’t,” he says. “There’s a star destroyer in orbit around the moon. If it doesn’t leave, and it won’t, we aren’t that lucky and they must know I’m here, we either find a transport that won’t be suspicious or… well. You know.”  
“So we steal a shuttle,” Tristan says. Bridger nods, a bright smile on his face.  
“Yep. We steal _another_ shuttle,” he sounds as if he finds this ridiculously funny.  
“What? Another? How many have you guys stolen?”  
“Oh, I don’t know. A lot. I guess there’s some administrator up in Coruscant who hates our guts.”  
Tristan smiles, still distracted by his maps, and pushes a hand through his hair. He’s taken off his helmet, and he feels strange, awkward. He’s usually barefaced just before his family. He can count with the fingers of one hand how many times Saxon and his old squad saw him without it, and Tristan had to share barracks with them.  
“At least the TIEs left with Rex,” says Bridger. He extends his right hand in Tristan’s direction; he rolls his eyes but helps him stand up. The Jedi stumbles, grabs Tristan’s shoulder, and then steps away.

Tristan turns back to the maps. “So we need to steal an Imperial shuttle _and_ find you a new helmet without alerting the troopers and the cruiser.”  
“Yeah,” says Bridger, absently. He advances until he’s next to Tristan, looks with him at the plans. “I guess we can’t just… kill them. Or something.”  
He sounds almost dejected. Tristan scowls and turns to him.  
“Why not?” he asks, confused. Bridger shrugs. He’s not looking at him, his gaze on the base blueprints. He’s found something, and whatever that is has his whole attention. Tristan resists the temptation to grab his arm, to make him look at him.  
“Jedi stuff,” Bridger says, as if that’s a real answer. “You know.”  
“I really don’t.”  
“Well, I don’t have time to explain it to you,” Bridger says, impatient and defensive. “But I won’t kill them if there’s another way. And there will be. There always is.”  
They look at each other in silence for an instant that feels eternal. The light of the consoles makes Bridger’s eyes look bluer, unnatural. He’s still pale, and there’s dust on his face, next to his nose. He’s shorter than Tristan, but he doesn’t feel like it: Tristan always forgets, the confidence with which he carries himself making him look bigger than life.  
“Okay,” he finally concedes, his voice cold. “Then what the hell do we do.”  
Bridger sighs, and closes his eyes. For a second, he looks as tired as Tristan feels. Then he opens them again, and the illusion shatters.  
“We could… trap them in,” he says. “Get them deep enough so they can’t use their comms, either, and… close all the doors.”  
Tristan hums. That could work. He looks through the base plans. The place is deeper than it looks: the lower levels are almost a kilometer inside the hill the base was built on.  
“How do we do that, though? One of us could act as bait, but how do we get back out again without getting trapped with them?”

Bridger hums, and then he turns back to the blueprints. He pages through them quickly, floor after floor after diagram after sketch, and finally stops in one that depicts the base’s ventilation system. He points at it, wordlessly.  
“The vents,” says Tristan, incredulous. He turns to Bridger, looks him from head to toe. The Jedi scowls.  
“What.”  
“I’m sure I don’t fit in there anymore, but you… I guess it could work.”  
“I don’t know if I should feel insulted.”  
“Don’t worry, you’re still young. You may still grow.”  
“We’re the same age,” Bridger says, scowling.  
Tristan smiles, bright. “ _I know_.”  
Bridger rolls his eyes, and turns back to the base plans.  
“ _Anyway_ ,” he begins, and points to a room in one of the lowest levels. “I think we should trap them there. I’ll act as bait, get them to follow me, and once we’re all in that room you can close the doors from here.”  
Tristan doesn’t like the plan. There are many, many things that can go wrong, and he hates the idea of staying in the command center, doing nothing, while Bridger runs around getting shot at.  
“There’re so many things that can go wrong with this idea of yours that I don’t even know where to start,” he says. He crosses his arms. “Do you really think I’ll just stay here while you do all that on your own?”  
“Someone needs to stay here, close the door, and program the communications array so they can’t contact the cruisers,” says Bridger, eyes wide and innocent. He smiles, knocks the beskar at Tristan’s shoulder with his knuckles. “And, like you very kindly pointed out, you won’t fit in the vents.”  
Tristan scowls. Bridger sighs, rakes his fingers through his short hair.  
“Don’t worry, it’s not the first time I’ve done something like this,” he says after a beat of silence. “Experience says that everything is probably gonna go horribly wrong, and you’ll have to come and save me.”  
“Again.”  
Bridger twists his mouth. “... yes. Again. Although, well, technically speaking you didn’t _really_ -”  
Tristan interrupts him. “You still need to find yourself a helmet or something. I feel like you’ve forgotten about this tiny, little detail.”  
The Jedi smiles. It’s not a very nice smile. Tristan blinks, slow, and stops with his hand in the blueprints’ control panel. Bridger has an interesting face.  
“Oh, I’m sure one of our trooper friends will let me borrow theirs,” he says.  
Tristan snorts. He sighs, tears his eyes away and puts his own helmet back on.  
“All right. We’ll do it your way,” he says. Bridger blinks, apparently surprised.  
“Really?”  
“Really. Just… you know. Be careful. My sister likes you, for some reason.”  
Bridger laughs, and the sound fills the center, bright. He turns towards the open door, the dark corridors beyond.  
“May the Force be with you,” he says. Tristan rolls his eyes inside his helmet.  
“Just keep your commlink on. And don’t die.”

v.

Tristan reprograms the communications array of the base so it’s jamming Imperial channels, finds out how to lock up their chosen room, and then waits, ever so anxious, the open door to the command center a dark maw behind his back.  
The longer he’s there, on his own and listening to the echoes of the fighting that drift up from the ground levels, the more restless he feels. The _wrongness_ of the base, that Bridger’s company had managed to dispel, crowds him. Here and there, in the room where he waits and in the many corridors and recesses and dormitories they passed in their trip from the hangar to the command center, the remains of the men who once lived and worked in the base can be seen. A discolored poster on a wall, an old datapad with a cracked screen, a lonely sock forgotten under the bed. Tristan, alone and tired and hungry, wonders what could have happened to kill not just them but the whole moon without leaving a trace. From space, Aumer is black and white and blue, beautiful if uncanny in its perfection.

When he hears footsteps at his back—plasteel boots, its clatter against the dusty floor unmistakable—he’s sure at first it’s just his overstimulated imagination. But then he turns back, and there’s something in the corridor, a shade, the silhouette of a man, dark against the darker shadows of the empty corridor. Tristan feels the stranger’s eyes on his face, and he lifts his blaster, shoots once, twice, without thinking.  
The shots illuminate the corridor. There’s nothing there: just his and Bridger’s footprints, marked upon the dust.

His commlink beeps, and he grabs it with his free hand. It’s shaking slightly; his voice isn’t, however, a small comfort.  
“Bridger,” he says. Tristan doesn’t dare to turn his back again to the corridor, but he nears the control panel. “Are you-?”  
“Yes!” the sound of the fighting fills the room. Bridger sounds… fine, if a little winded. Tristan feels himself calm down. “Do it!”  
Tristan pushes the button. “Done. Follow the vents to the room on top of yours. I’ll meet you there.”  
The Mandalorian turns off his commlink. The light that filters through the grime on the command center’s windows is a tenuous, grayish thing that doesn’t reach far, and the darkness of the corridor is as dense, as imposing, as ever. Tristan listens carefully for the echo of footsteps, of a gun’s safety clicking off; he hears nothing.  
I need to sleep, he thinks. Must have been his mind, overtired and overstressed, playing tricks on him.

He then takes a deep breath, holsters his blaster, and leaves the command center. The darkness in the corridor embraces him.

*

The good thing is that Bridger’s plan worked: all the troopers are trapped inside what used to be a storage room, its doors and walls double-plated. They’re uncommunicated and isolated and mostly whole, if missing a helmet.  
The bad thing is that it may have worked a bit too well.

The old base is very cold, but Tristan is sweating under his armor, Bridger’s weight dragging him down. He’s _mostly_ fine: the blaster shot only grazed his thigh and didn’t rupture anything too important, and both of them are very aware the Jedi got out lucky.  
“I can walk on my own,” he says. His breath whistles everytime he exhales, and the black helmet he’s appropriated distorts the sound into a growl.  
Tristan doesn’t answer: he’s tired, and he doesn’t see the point of arguing when he knows he’s right.  
“Tristan, I can-”  
Tristan lets go of him. Ezra falls. For a beat, they both look at each other, their breaths loud in the silent corridor.  
“Sure you can, Bridger. Sure you can,” says Tristan. The Jedi hunches his shoulders, and Tristan reads the irritation, the frustration and the impatience and everything else in the posture. When he offers Ezra his hand, the rebel ignores it, and stubbornly stands up on his own. He slowly starts walking down the corridor, a hand on one of the walls.  
Tristan inhales, keeps the air inside for a few seconds, and then exhales; he tries to calm down, to keep his own anxiety in check. It doesn’t work, but he begins to move anyway, following Bridger’s footsteps. He knows the Jedi doesn’t like him much, but until that moment he’d been… different. Annoying, and arrogant, but also charming and willing to help and let himself be helped in turn.  
“Bridger, wait,” the Jedi ignores him. He keeps walking, or trying to, his injured leg leaving a line on the dirty floor. “Ezra. What the hell is wrong with you?”  
Ezra stops; his shoulders lose a fraction of the tension they hold. Tristan gets closer to him, walking slowly, but he doesn’t move again, and when the Mandalorian attempts to help him, he lets Tristan grab his waist. His arm is a welcome weight on Tristan’s shoulders, despite the exhaustion and everything else.  
“Nothing. It’s just… I’m tired. I guess.”  
Tristan frowns beneath his helmet; he doesn’t say anything. He looks around, trying to orient himself, the blueprints he’s memorized guiding him. They should be nearing one of the elevators. He hopes they can make it work. He’s not looking forward to the trip upstairs otherwise.  
“It’s this place,” Ezra blurts suddenly. Tristan really, really hates that trooper helmet. It makes him sound inhuman. “There’s something wrong about this place.”  
“No shit,” grunts Tristan.  
“No, I mean. It’s beyond the whole… you know. The whole ‘how did the Empire know we’d be here and why is it so dark and smelly and creepy.’”  
They should be really close to the elevators, and Tristan tightens his arm around Ezra, trying to move quicker. Ezra keeps talking, almost babbling.  
“It feels like… other places I’ve been to. But it can’t be, it’s not possible.”  
Where are the fucking elevators.  
“What do you mean?” Tristan doesn’t know if he actually wants to know, but he needs the distraction. He feels as if the darkness is pushing down on him, despite Ezra’s company and the light of his helmet.  
“It’s the Force. It’s very strong here, but not… constantly. Like… like a faulty motivator. And it feels off, as well.”  
Okay. Tristan's guessing that’s probably bad, even if he doesn’t really understand what the hell Ezra is talking about. They’ve got worse problems, however.  
“I think we’re lost.”  
A beat.  
“What.”

*

They turn back, down the corridor they’ve just left. Tristan can see their footprints on the floor for a while, but then they disappear as well. The durasteel walls all look the same, and the silence of the base is almost absolute, only broken by the whistling of Aumer’s winds, by a broken faucet, drip drip dripping water in a dark room far away.

They never get to the room Tristan found Ezra in. Their own footprints disappear, the dust thick and undisturbed on the floor, and then the durasteel walls do as well. Suddenly they’re in an underground gallery, its low ceiling scratching Tristan’s helmet in places, its sides dripping brackish water.

Sometimes, Tristan hears the echo of footsteps, plasteel boots squelching in mud.  
He’d think he’s going crazy if he didn’t know Ezra hears them as well. The Jedi won’t stop shivering, his grip on Tristan so strong he can feel it through his armor. It’s neither exhaustion, pain or terror, it’s something else, but he doesn’t say what _that_ is, and that scares Tristan worse than anything.

He doesn’t know how long they keep walking, their helmets knocking together. He doesn’t know either who is holding who up, anymore. Tristan’s tired, and hungry, and so scared he feels like he’s moved beyond all those things. He’s been transformed into a body, a meat-thing that moves and breathes and sweats and shivers, that listens to the creaking of plasteel boots in the darkness.

*

It’s Ezra the one who finally stops walking. He ceases to move, and Tristan does as well, more a reflex than a conscious decision.  
“We can’t keep on like this,” says the Jedi, his voice rough and too loud in the silent gallery. He sits carefully on the floor, ignoring the mud, and then takes off his helmet. It’s so cold his breath clouds in front of his face. He switches on his lightsaber, and holds it over his head, and looks around while Tristan sits beside him. He turns off the light of his helmet.  
The air smells strange, and the oxygen is thin, but it’s breathable. Tristan remembers the plans he found in the command center, a thousand years ago in the past. They must be in one of the lower levels. They must have taken a wrong turn, and they are deep underground, deep inside the hill.

“We can’t keep on going like this,” Ezra says again. Tristan looks at him. It may be the sickly green of his saber, but he doesn’t look well. He looks haunted; he looks _hunted_. His free hand grips his wounded thigh.  
“No, we can’t,” answers Tristan. He looks down, to his lap and his helmet. His house colors look back at him. Suddenly, he wishes he’d let Sabine paint it like she wanted to. He’d declined: he’d thought he needed to do it himself, to show everyone that he was back in the fold, that he’d really turned his back to the Saxon clan.  
He’d also felt that he didn’t really deserve that kind of gift. A tiny piece of his sister’s soul on his armor, for all the world to see.  
“I’m sorry I got us lost,” he tells Ezra. “I thought I’d memorized the plans. I was wrong.”  
Ezra sighs. He lifts a trembling hand and grabs Tristan’s shoulder, over the beskar but close to his neck, almost nestling under his jaw. It rests there for a few seconds, and then he lets it fall.  
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ezra finally says. “This place… it feels a bit like the Jedi Temple in Lothal. The Force is strong here. It’s testing you, testing us.”  
“Testing us, how? What for? I’m not a Jedi. I'm not even… I can’t do what you do, I can’t sense things the way you do.”  
Ezra shrugs. “The Force works in mysterious ways,” he says, his tone slightly mocking. Tristan has the feeling he’s quoting someone else.

Tristan sighs. He’s so very tired. He wants to be home, soaking in one of the hotsprings under the house. He closes his eyes and presses his eyelids until it hurts, and then blinks away the stars.  
“That’s all very interesting and stuff,” he says, his voice dry. He tries to keep it light, to not betray how scared he really is. It works: Ezra rolls his eyes, but he also smiles, small and crooked, “but how do we get out of here?”  
Tristan wonders how long they’ve been down there. Wonders what’s happened to the troopers they trapped in that storage room. To the cruisers orbiting Aumer.  
“Hey,” says Ezra. He puts his hand on Tristan’s shoulder again. “It’s fine. Or, it’ll be. Don’t worry.”  
“‘Don’t worry’? How am I supposed to do that?”  
“Well, worry _quietly_ , then.”  
“I _am_ quiet. I haven’t said a word. It’s you the one who-”

Footsteps. Plastisteel creaking, and the soft sound of someone breathing.

Tristan feels something grip his throat, his fear so intense it’s something physical, tactile. Ezra stands up, wounded leg forgotten, his saber in front of him, and Tristan imitates him, back to back, his guns in his hands. He doesn’t even bother with the helmet.  
“Who’s there?” he says. At his back, Ezra is silent, deceptively calm, relaxed. Tristan takes a deep breath. “We can hear you.”  
The man—if it’s a man—steps forward until the points of his boots are almost in the saber’s circle of light, a few meters in front of Ezra. It turns the white plastisteel green.  
 _A Stormtrooper,_ Tristan thinks at first. Then: _no, he’s not._ He doesn’t know how he knows, but he’s never been so sure about something.  
“Who are you?” says Ezra. He doesn’t lower his weapon, but he sounds calm.  
A beat, and then, “I’m CT-6451, sir.”  
Tristan turns until he’s shoulder to shoulder with Ezra. They cross a confused look. A clone?  
“What’s your name… trooper?” the words feel clumsy, but Ezra keeps on. “Why have you been following us?”  
“I… haven’t earned my name yet, sir,” answers the clone. He steps fully into the light.

He’s a clone, alright. Tristan can see Rex in his face: the dark eyes, the proud nose, everything else.  
But he looks so young. Younger that Tristan ever thought the clones could be: he’s barely older than Sabine, than himself. Ezra lowers his weapon, but he doesn’t switch it off. Tristan is glad. Without its light they’d be blind.  
“How are you here?” he asks, the question out of his mouth before he can think to shut up. Ezra glances at him, a warning in his eyes.  
“I got lost,” CT-6451 answers.  
Tristan opens and closes his mouth. He doesn’t say, It’s been twenty years. He doesn’t say, you should be dead. He doesn’t say, Are we dead?

Sabine _did_ tell him it would get weird.

Ezra doesn’t even blink. He looks the clone head on, something very like pity on his blue eyes.  
“Can you help us? We’re lost as well,” he asks.  
CT-6451 looks down, suddenly nervous, almost scared. Tristan recognises what he’s wearing as the white armor from the illegal holoreels his father used to show them when he was young, almost like the one the stormtroopers wear but more elegant, less blocky.  
“I am not allowed,” finally answers the clone.  
“Why?” asks Ezra, almost gentle.  
“It won’t let me.”  
Ezra and Tristan cross a look.  
“But I don’t think that you need me,” goes on the clone. He points at Ezra with a hand. “You are a Jedi, aren’t you?”  
Ezra nods, suddenly quiet. Tristan bites down on all the things he’d like to say about Ezra and his supposed abilities as a Jedi; he’ll save them for later, when they are home safe.  
“They told us we’d get a Jedi General,” the clone says suddenly, as if he had just remembered. He looks at them, quiet, for a few seconds. “Goodbye.”  
And then he’s gone.

Tristan sighs. He holsters his guns and picks up his helmet from the floor, and then he looks at Ezra.  
“What did he mean?” he asks.  
“What?” Ezra jumps. “Oh, I… I think I know.”  
“That’s reassuring.”  
Ezra snorts. He puts on his own borrowed helmet. In the green light of the saber, its curves and corners look grotesque.  
“Tristan,” he says, his voice suddenly serious. “I know you don’t like me much, but can you trust me?”  
Tristan blinks, caught by surprise. He chews on his lip for a second before answering.  
“You’re the one who’s been snapping at me and reminding me of Saxon since before we left Krownest with Rex,” he says. He sighs. “I do not _not_ like you.”  
“Okay,” Ezra sounds weird. Guilty, tired, something else altogether. “But do you trust me?”  
For some reason, Tristan does. He nods.

Ezra reaches for Tristan’s arm, grabs his left wrist, and places his hand on his shoulder. He turns his head and looks over to Tristan.  
“Whatever happens,” he says, “do not let go.”  
He then switches off his lightsaber, and darkness floods the corridor.

**epilogue.**

It takes them almost a day to make it back to Krownest. They disable the two transponders hidden in their stolen shuttle, and then spend almost a whole standard rotation jumping in and out of hyperspace lanes until they arrive at the asteroid belt where they’re supposed to rendezvous with the Ghost. The big Lasat of Syndulla’s crew helps Rex transfer the shuttle’s load to the Ghost’s small cargo bay, and meanwhile Tristan and Ezra are fussed over in the crew quarters of the ship.  
Tristan finds himself overwhelmed very quickly. The first thing Sabien does when he sees him is hug him so hard his beskar creaks, helmet against helmet in the corridor connecting the ships. When she sees Ezra, a couple of steps behind Tristan and leaning against Kanan, she frees an arm and drags him into the hug, trooper helmet and all.  
“Sabine,” begins Tristan. He’s crushed between his sister and Ezra, and feeling very, very uncomfortable. “Sabine, we’re fine.”  
Sabine relaxes his grip, but doesn’t let go of them completely. “You’re half-starved, wounded and dehydrated. And Ezra got shot in the face!” she says, as if they needed reminding.  
“Yes, but that’s because Bridger is a fucking idiot,” answers Tristan calmly. He hears Kanan’s snort softly. The Jedi’s quiet amusement is a steady warmth at his back.  
“Wow, fuck you Tristan,” says Ezra. “Next time I’ll leave you there.”  
Tristan turns his head to look at him. He’s removed his helmet, and he’s very close. The blaster wound looks awful.

_No you won’t,_ he thinks. He doesn’t say anything; he grabs Ezra’s waist and helps him the rest of the way into the ship.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm jasondont @ tumblr, come talk to me if you want. i'm bad at answering msgs but i love attention.


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